It's all about the sun!

[VectraMan]

The opprobrium is leaking across to areas where we have much higher skill such as in short range forecasting and climate change

op·pro·bri·um [uh-proh-bree-uhm]
–noun
1. the disgrace or the reproach incurred by conduct considered outrageously shameful; infamy.
2. a cause or object of such disgrace or reproach.

Just thought I'd add that to help out the "less intelligent". I of course knew what it meant.

[Paddy]

Do some research and stick it up your bum

Why is oil usually found in deserts and arctic areas?: Scientific American

Oil and gas result mostly from the rapid burial of dead microorganisms in environments where oxygen is so scarce that they do not decompose. This lack of oxygen enables them to maintain their hydrogen-carbon bonds, a necessary ingredient for the production of oil and gas. Newly developing ocean basins, formed by plate tectonics and continental rifting, provide just the right conditions for rapid burial in anoxic waters. Rivers rapidly fill these basins with sediments carrying abundant organic remains. Because the basins have constricted water circulation, they also have lower oxygen levels than the open ocean. For instance, the Gulf of California, an ocean basin in development, is making new oil and gas in real time today

The difficulty here is that there are practical implications for actually extracting and converting these resources at a rate which will meet future daily demand levels. With conventional oil you drill a hole in the ground and it comes out in liquid form. With coal you have to set up a mining operation, which isn't quite the same thing. For the same reasons, tar sands will never produce as much oil as the oil fields in the gulf, even though there are comparable levels of total oil available in each. Conversion also takes a lot of energy, meaning that the energy return on energy invested is poor.

The amount of fuel left inside the planet isn't really an issue (there will always be some left), it's the speed with which it can be extracted and supplied that's the problem. Currently global oil use is around 1000 barrels per second.

Says who?

UK Coal | Business | guardian.co.uk

Ch 23 Page 157: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air

Here’s the arbitrary definition I’ll use: the
burn-rate is “sustainable” if the resources would last 1000 years. A ton of
coal delivers 8000 kWh of chemical energy, so 1600 Gt of coal shared be-
tween 6 billion people over 1000 years works out to a power of 6 kWh per
day per person

[TimberWolf]

If this gets out weathermen will have to get a first class degrees astrophysics rather than in astrology as at present.

[TimberWolf]

UK Coal | Business | guardian.co.uk

Ch 23 Page 157: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air

The first is a link to a stock chart for UK coal

And from the second:

[the UK has] 100 tons per person

And 100 tonnes would last how long to feed, clothe, heat and transport the average UK citizen? The UK has flip all coal left - including the awkward to get at stuff. We burnt ours 100 years ago.

Worldwide it is a different story.